Saturday, 21 September 2013

Autumn is all about the light. As the sun drops lower towards the horizon and the temperatures fall, we get longer shadows, shorter days, mists, dew and sunlight filtering through the leaves, falling obliquely to light up the last summer flowers like jewels.

I've been dreaming of a pond for the garden for ages but today that dream is a step closer. This huge, now empty, flowerbed will be the site for it. It is surprising just how much space the flowerbed took up in the lawn and half of it will be reseeded with grass. It is sad to see the QMMFB go but it had outgrown it's space and usefulness. All around are reminders that summer is over, not least of all the virginia creeper that is putting on a fantastic show this year.

Friday, 20 September 2013

Three award-winning writers feature in
the very first Rochester Literature Festival, an eclectic and
imaginative ten-day programme of events inspired by the overarching
theme, ‘Other Worlds, Other Voices’. The festival begins
on 3rd October to coincide with National Poetry Day and
runs to 13th October.

The festival opens with multi-award
winning, Guyana-born writer Maggie Harris reading from a
selection of her moving, resonant work in celebration of Black
History Month in the first of two events in association with Medway
Libraries. Maggie Harris is now based in the county of Kent and she
has won countless accolades for her work, both at home and abroad.
She will also be leading a participatory poetry workshop on Saturday
5th October.

In the evening of 5th
October, Rochester-based Sarah Hehir, who won the 2013 BBC
Writer’s Prize for her radio play ‘Bang Up’, first
broadcast on Radio 4 in August, will attend a rehearsed reading of
the play featuring actress Emma Dewhurst (‘Parade’s End’,
‘The Iron Lady’) as part of A Night at the Theatre,
which also sees the re-launch of 17percent’s ‘She Writes’
initiative with their new comedy play showcase What’s through
the Door?, inspired by an HG Wells’ story.

The following Saturday (12th
October), we present an evening with Bill Lewis, original
Medway poet, painter and storyteller. Bill won the Literature
category in the Medway Culture & Design Awards 2012. In The
Hero’s Journey – A Call to Adventure, he will share his great
knowledge of magical realism, metaphor and myth, referencing his own
life and work, and contemplating Joseph Campbell’s famous vision of
the hero’s journey and how the idea impacts on literature and film.

In addition to our headline writers,
two highly original events promise to entertain over the festival
weekends. The Skywatcher Investigation is an interactive
story game on Sunday October 6th, where the audience will
follow clues to various tableaux in locations in Rochester High
Street, before being directed to a final performance.

For Alice, the festival’s
final event on Sunday October 13th, contemporary and
ballet dancers will interpret excerpts from the ballet Alice
by composer and musician Jacob Bride, who will lead members of the
City of Rochester Symphony Orchestra and local band, Brides of Rain.
New writing, both prose and song, based on Lewis Carroll’s eternal
tales of the young girl’s journey through his strange and wondrous
land, will also feature in this three hour, drop-in special to close
the festival.

The festival also includes three very
special events produced by ME4Writers: the launch of their eagerly
awaited book, City Without a Head; a participatory creative
writing tour of Rochester, Write Around Town, and a welcome
return of Poetrymon, where members of the public can search
for handmade poem-cards hidden throughout the Medway Towns.

There will be further opportunities for
people to hone their writing skills in a number of word-related
creative writing workshops: writer Philip Kane leads From Sorcery
to Starships, a fantasy and sci fi workshop and an informal
writers’ games night Play: Write. The RLF team will also
host another version of their successful readers’ and writers’
Potlatch. Alongside the literature events, an exhibition
entitled Other Worlds, Other Voices, runs between 5th
– 12th October at Rochester Community Hub and Library.

While some events are free, they may
require booking due to limited numbers. Other events have a small fee
to cover venue costs. Please visit the ‘Other Worlds, Other Voices’
page at rochesterlitfest.com for links to find out more about
each individual event, and to book tickets.

Tuesday, 17 September 2013

Just
running through all the movies I've reviewed for the 2010/2014
awards and found that the Inception movie and sound track review has
gone AWOL. I don't know why... sometimes these things just happen /
it's a massive digital conspiracy to wreak havoc upon my finely honed
organisational skills... ANYWAY. Don't panic! I'm going to review
both right here and now because that's the kind of person I am. (I
might have already reviewed them somewhere else, the review I give
now may not bear any resemblance to any previous review...)

The
dream within a dream... not since The Matrix has sci-fi and CGI
fitted so well together. A mind tickling maze of a thriller and a
roller coaster ride of action from start to finish. Leonardo
DiCaprio plays the lead character Cobb, a fugitive thief who needs to
steal company secrets from inside someone's mind in order to return
to his old life. He gets a team together for this one last job but
fails to let them know the danger they all face, haunted by an enemy
of his own making. Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken
Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Dileep Rao to name a few of the great cast
list all give strong performances but for me, Marion Cotillard is
brilliant as the vengeful Mal. An atmospheric and memorable movie,
complimented by a beautiful soundtrack. A mind boggling five out of
five stars.